


Farther Away

by Frolic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Community: homesmut, Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, Kink Meme, M/M, More information about consent issues inside, Non Consensual, Non-Canon Relationship, Post-Sburb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-09
Updated: 2011-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:39:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frolic/pseuds/Frolic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gamzee Makara just doesn't motherfucking believe in miracles anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sugar

**Author's Note:**

> RE: CONSENT ISSUES, slight spoilers below.
> 
> It's occurred to me that because this story is told strictly from Gamzee's point of view, the development of consent issues can come out of nowhere for my readers because they are a surprise to Gamzee and he doesn't see them coming at all. Eridan has been coerced - basically blackmailed - into having a sexual relationship with Gamzee by others. Also, while he was in withdraw from soper slime, Gamzee attempted to have sex with Tavros... and did stop once he understood that consent hadn't been given. Basically, Gamzee tries to be a good guy, sort of fails. I've tried to treat the noncon in this piece with the weight and attitude such things need. Please let me know if you think I have failed to do so.

The thing is, it isn’t a motherfucking miracle. It’s a lot of things, like destructive and ill-advised and desperate, but no matter how deep you sink into Eridan Ampora, it isn’t a miracle. You’re still Gamzee Makara and you’re back on the slime again, but you can’t find _any_ miracles, especially not in the company of others. If there were ever miracles - if you didn’t dream them - you surely killed them; wrapped your hands tight around your club and swung, swung, swung, reveled in the CRACK as they broke. Smiled, licked your lips, and trod on them.

Maybe existing after The Scratch is a miracle. You don’t think so. You think it’s a travesty, and you don’t know why Karkat insisted that you be taken along, when he won’t even look at you any more even though you can’t hardly even keep your eyes off him.

He was the first place you looked for a miracle after Kanaya and Vriska got you doped up again. “Karkat,” you said to him, voice wavering like a drunk, “Karkat,” you pleaded because he wouldn’t look at you. He was tense, frightened, and when you said, “Tell me Tavros isn’t motherfuckin’ - “ and he was screaming at you before you could even finish your question, aiming for angry and getting terrified and grieving instead.

Karkat did not give you a miracle. He gave you a wake up call. YES, YOU UNBELIEVABLY UNSTABLE CROTCHMUNCHING SHITSTAIN, HE'S FUCKING DEAD YOU GRUBFUCKING SHITPANNED USELESS GODDAMN JUGGALO; VRISKA SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU WHEN SHE HAD THE BILEHUMPING CHANCE, BUT YOU'RE ALIVE AND HE'S DEAD SO GET YOUR NOOKWHIFFLING BULGEBITING UNBEARABLE FUCKING SELF OUT OF MY SIGHT AND TAKE YOUR DISGUSTING HEMOPAINTED HORNPILE WITH YOU!

Brave enough to yell at you, but still not brave enough to look at you. None of them are - even the humans won’t. They all look at Eridan, though. Even you look at him now, and he has taken pains to perfect the art of hiding. Even when you make eye contact, he is really just staring through you, and that almost hurts except you are snugly wrapped in your drughaze and so it is just a motherfucking disappointment, motherfucker, only it’s not only that because all you can feel is tired and guilty and more guilty.

The first time he comes to you, it’s because he’s still awake and it'd been two nights since everyone escaped to live a better life, free of the game, and you’re the only one awake or maybe the only one who hasn’t told him you wish he’d have died or ceased existing or something. The dead of the day, the sun as bright as it’s fucking going to get, and he fings you standing just inside the frame of a door, contemplating low, rolling hills. "Wwhat, are you leavvin'?" he asks you. At the time, it sounds abrasive. Are you runnin awway, you cowward? Can't deal wwith the wway they look at you? Later, you realize it was jealously, because Eridan had always wanted people to look at him, before, but once he had everyone's attention, all he wanted to do was go back to being a joke.

You turn away from the brightly lit day. He has abandoned his cape and his glasses and his stupid romantic notions; he looks pretty and by pretty you mean he looks just as alone and guilty as you are. "No, just motherfuckin' enjoyin' the sunshine, motherfucker," you say, but of course this falls flat. No one is reassured by you anymore, and that’s motherfucking fine, except it isn’t because Tavros always said how reliable you were at being comforting but now all you are is numb. You used to make Tavros smile even when he was scared, but you can’t even reassure yourself anymore, not to even motherfucking Eridan Ampora who breathes only shallowly and looks at you when no one else will.

You and him don’t talk about anything important. You hardly even talk at all. Eridan says, “I don’t suppose you’d lowwer yourself to fuck me, wwould you, Makara?” like a robot, body casually posed for violent rejection. More like he’s asking to borrow a piece of paper than propositioning you. It feels cheap and insincere but you haven’t touched anyone since - so you take him at face value.

It’s hard to say who’s more surprised when you press him against the wall of the entrance way, say, “Sure thing motherfucker,” before you cover his mouth with yours and try desperately to feel something.

 

The first time it's a fucking conquest. You just motherfucking want to prove that you can feel something, and you do. Only, all you feel is his skin and his breath and it's not like you motherfucking wanted. But you take it anyway because you know you can’t have a miracle and sometimes his skin tastes familiar, sweet and sugary if you close your eyes and don’t focus and pretend he’s trembling with nerves. You’re gentler than you mean to be and you get just lost enough to call him Tavros and not be sorry.

He’s still just pathetic enough to not even flinch. It isn’t a miracle.

Eridan doesn’t spout any romantic bullshit like you’d expect. He's outgrown that. Well, more like he shot it through the torso and left it behind. But you don't mind the blood on his hands because you've got it on yours, too, and sometimes you pretend to lick the blood off him. But he doesn't appreciate it of course, and anyway you can’t make him clean; only he can do that and he tries to do it with you.

You guess he thinks someday, you're going to go crazy again and maybe he'll get to live. But that’s when you’re feeling hopeful because most of the time you’re sure he thinks you are going to go crazy some day, and maybe he'll get to die first, and horribly. But both of those are stupid things to think because you already are crazy, because you think it's sweet when he’s sleeping and you honkHONKhonkHONK and he whimpers, clings closer to you for protection and you get to kiss his forehead and he relaxes.

When he’s asleep, you like him the best. His face smooths out and he’s said that he likes that you’re warmer than him and you get to hold him and pretend like he’s Tavros. You miss Tavros.

 

Sometimes you lose yourself in the slime and Eridan is suddenly Tavros, then that's okay because Tavros was always afraid, too, and when you think of Eridan as Tavros suddenly it's much easier to be gentle. You wonder where his robotic legs are, but it doesn't matter because aren't you glad to have his sugared skin back? He doesn't tremble like he usually does but Vriska isn't looking for him anymore, and maybe he misses you, too. You kiss his mouth and lick his neck and you bring him back to life with skilled hands and tongue and you motherfucking apologize the whole way through, sometimes you barely even get your lips on his skin because you've got to let your motherfucking best bud know how sorry you are, so you just stroke him with your wide hands. You ignore the fins. You see only Tavros because you are buzzed out of your mind and you’re sure you know what love is.

Then, you ask yourself why you are apologizing. And you remember. Because he's dead. He's motherfucking dead and he used to have such sweet skin, but you didn't ever tell him how much you liked his skin enough, and now you’re telling Eridan, not Tavros, and it’s all make-believe. Clandestine meetings, never enough time, too much sopor to admit how much you like what you get to do to him and the breathless little noises he makes, and then by the time they’d drugged you, Vriska is sitting in front of you in her stupid god tier outfit again with Kanaya fucking Maryam standing next to her and glowing.

She is answering a question you don’t even remember asking, sounding condescending and broken at the same time: You can’t speak to Tavros. Don’t you remem8er?

You’re still Gamzee Makara but you can’t find any miracles, anymore.


	2. Guilt

You removed your hornpile from the main room and you cleaned them off and then you let them live in your sylladex until after the Scratch, and then you desperately want everything to go back to normal so you finally take them out again. But you lay in the hornpile alone because you wouldn’t dare to put them in one of the common areas. The first time Eridan walks into your room is the third time you fuck him, and afterwards you catch him staring at the pile unlike he looks at anything else. He’s focused on it and he shakes and when you touch him he whirls to face you and for a moment his eyes almost crush you because you didn’t know that someone’s eyes could be so tragic.

Standing in your room after, you stare at the hornpile. Even though it reminds you of what you did, you really like your hornpile. The honks make Karkat twitch, and sometimes Terezi too, but you’ve dallied over throwing it out, though you know that everyone else has gotten rid of their various piles of junk. Sollux set fire to Eridan’s pile of shitty wands, and made Eridan watch - almost set fire to Eridan, too. No one will touch you or your hornpile but you wish they would. You’re so tired of being ignored.

The shiny surface of the horns reflects your image back at you and you think about how you feel when you see that centaursTesticle and arsenicCatnip are still offline and how you catch yourself staring at your hands sometimes, still seeing olive blood there. When you think about those things, you think you know how Eridan feels, when he looks at your horn pile.

You get rid of it. Rose sees you with your shovel, stares for ages as you toss armfuls of horns into the hole you’d dug, each soft honk breaking your collapsing and expanding bladder-based main vascular organ. You’ve been all up in ruining things real well, and when you’re done throwing dirt over the horns all you can think to say to her is, “Hey chica, motherfuckin’ enjoyin’ the fresh air with me ain’tcha?” Of course she’s not enjoying it, because you’re here, and you stroll away feeling hollowed out and unsatisfied. You regret doing it until the next time Eridan comes to you, fidgety and distant, and stares at where the pile was with relief you could almost make a motherfuckin’ pie out of.

You smile, push him against the wall, and blow him. He doesn’t smile and you weren’t expecting him to. But he doesn’t hold himself so tense after that when you get your eyes or your hands on him, and with Eridan motherfuckin’ Ampora that’s like winnin’ a triathalon while sick with the northern Alternian death flu.


	3. Ugly

You don’t wear your makeup anymore. You let the scars that Nepeta left across your face show because you can’t say you aren’t dangerous anymore and even though you desperately desperately want to go back to how things were, you can’t bear to think of forgetting. And yeah, that means they can also see the scars on your jaw where your vestigial fins once rested, but they never look at you anyway so it doesn’t matter. But you look at yourself, and when you’re sitting alone somewhere, sometimes you catch your hands tracing the rough skin that mars your face like you’re checking that it’s still there.

If anyone would look at you, would they think your face ugly, now? But that doesn’t matter. They know your soul is ugly, they know that your subconscious is hideous and fractured, they know all the things about you that you never wanted them to know. The things you made Tavros promise to keep secret. The things you hoped Tavros would forget about you, so you could have him like you wanted.

Sometimes after you’ve taken a lot of slime and can’t tell up from down you think, At least, he ain’t bein’ all around up in here to not be all lookin’ at me. And then you always feel terrible, because it would be worth Tavros not looking at you to have him alive. You would suffer through his renewed fear gratefully if he meant he was safe. You just want your best motherfucking bro back, by which you mean you were so flushed for Tavros that the taste of his skin made you fly, made you dizzy, made you fall back into the here and now no matter how buzzed you were or weren’t.

Tavros had been beautiful. Sometimes you think you hear his stutter skipping in your head late in the day when you can’t sleep, like how he used to hesitate to say your name. You think he was much more concerned about the hemospectrum then you were - but then maybe, considering how you are when you’re sober, it was possible you’d put his concern for it in him in the first place. He had met you while you were sober, after all.

Back before you had ever even conceived of sopor silme, you spent your time walking up and down the coast, following your lusus as best you could. You were young then, just barely not a wriggler and weak. So weak that whenever your lusus could no longer abide the shallows and you lost sight of your caretaker, you would collapse on the nearest dry land and stifle sobs. On one such occasion, looking out at the ocean from a thin strip of rocky beach clinging to the base of a steep cliff, and you failed to quiet yourself sufficiently. Huddled on a chunk of rock and hugging yourself, you were interrupted by a timid voice from above.

“Uhh,” said the face that peeked over the cliff, “Not that, it’s any of my business but, are you okay?”

And that’s how you met Tavros Nitram. Just some weak-willed dirt blood that happened to have expressed an interest in your well-being, at first. You condescended him. You terrified him. You blackmailed, bribed, threatened, and manipulated him into talking to you whenever he was able and sometimes when he wasn’t.

You were young, lonely, and sober. You pushed off his value to you for as long as you could Eventually you found that no matter how much you terrorized him, it wasn’t satisfying, but to save face you tormented him none-the-less. You’ll never make it to adulthood, motherfucker. AIN’T NO WAY YOU WON’T BE MOTHERFUCKIN CULLED FOR BEIN’ SO FUCKIN USELESS, MOTHERFUCKER. You told him he would never find anyone to fill his quadrants You told him that he was worthy of disgust, not pity, and no one could hate him when he was so weak-willed. No one would auspistize him and certainly no one would try to help him better himself or his value to society.

Motherfuckin’ all you’ll ever have is me, you said to him, Make it worth my fuckin’ time.

On your wriggling day, one just weeks before your vestigial fins are removed and only maybe a quarter of a sweep after meeting him, he sent you a one-wheeled device. Even though compared to you he was unforgivably impoverished and even though you went out of your way to tell him that society would be better off if he dropped dead.Just because hE THOUGHT YOU uHH, NEEDED SOME, SORT OF CHEERING UP, he spent money he didn’t have to get you something you wouldn’t appreciate. But it leans forlornly against a wall or lays dejectedly on the floor of your respiteblock everywhere you’ve lived since you got it.

More than sweep later you repaid him with a four-wheeled device, though by that point you were always high anyway and he didn’t think you even remembered that you were ever cruel. You didn’t let him pay for it and you brushed him off when he tried to thank you. You helped him set up his ramp and your fingers brushed against his more often then they ought have but not as often as you’d have like.

You didn’t kiss him until you were all playing a deadly game and then it was necessary to steal them out from under Vriska Sekret but you _ought_ to have done it earlier. Sometimes when you were kissing Tavros, or when your mouth was on him, and once when you rested a hand on his shoulder, he trembled. Shook. The first few times you went beyond oral, Tavros apologized and apologized even though you never said he needed to. The first time he was naked and you saw him - an apology. When you mentioned the way he flushed chocolate beneath you - an apology. When he spilled his genetic material all over you - an apology and _shame_.

No matter how carefully you handled him, Tavros never forgot what you were like while sober.


	4. Eyes

When Eridan isn’t around, you ache. It’s deep and it thrums on the off-beats of your heart, which you have heard Terezi say she doubts you have. If you couldn’t feel it you would agree, and often you wish you had left it in the lab with Tavros, or at least now had the nerve to rip it out. Heart is a human word for the organ anyway, though, so you try not to think of it like that. It stays firmly entrenched in your chest and you do your damnedest to think of it in the most clinical terms possible. If you don’t think of it as your emotional center, you can imagine that you have some really fantastic fatal blood disease which will kill you. It would be something to look forward to, anyway.

But you know that that couldn’t be true, because there could never be a blood disease which shows itself only when either you are desperate for someone to lay their eyes on you and no one will or when you look at your one-wheeled device and can’t decide how you feel about it except that it’s painful. Unless heartbreak is a disease, but they all think you’re heartless, anyway. Maybe if the motherfuckers would look at you - but they won’t.

They all look at Eridan all the time though. All the motherfucking time, and their eyes are hostile. Their eyes say, “JUST1C3 W1LL B3 S3RV3D” and “DON’T THINK WE’VE FUCKING FORGIVEN YOU” and “Do Not Think You Can Escape Somewhere You Could Be Happy”. You wish you could shield Eridan from those eyes. Five months after the first time you fuck him, and you don’t want motherfucking anyone’s eyes on him except yours, except that he won’t look at you, either. You fuck him so hard he passes out sometimes, just so that he’ll sleep because you fucking hate the bags under his eyes and the listless way he moves when he’s running on fumes, but he still looks right through you, like you don’t matter.

You’ve always been starved for attention, but you situation now is the worst it’s ever been. Eridan’s reactions are dispassionate at best, and you know that it could be anyone in bed with him, and that makes you crazier than being sober ever could. He looks straight through you even when you’re making him scream and come. You need him to be focused on you but even when you take him by surprise, drag him into an unused room and do wonderful sexy dirty things to him, he doesn’t seem to appreciate it.

The more you do him the more relaxed he gets, until eventually he doesn’t even bother with his arrogance or his bravado or his bigotry, but that doesn’t make it better at all. He’s no better than a doll, staring blankly ahead and making all of the right noises at the right time but never being there, with you, in the moment. No matter how gentle you are, it doesn’t seem to matter to him - unless you’re whispering Tavros’ name against his skin. Yes - one evening you are tracing his abdomen with your tongue, slide your tongue all the way up his chest and his neck until you can kiss him and his response is simple to lay there and kiss back with all of the passion of a dead thing. Until, on a whim, you mutter, “Tavros...?” with genuine concern and then his hands are on you and he suddenly has feeling again, until you’re through fucking him at least and then he’s disgustingly listless again.

The whole affair sickens you. You get out of bed to expel the contents of your stomach and Eridan is gone when you come back - and just as well, because for days after that you almost can’t stand the sight of him.

You want to be a good motherfucking troll now, you don’t want to hurt anybody and especially not Eridan. You promised Karkat you wouldn’t hurt anyone again, and that you would never be sober. You promised your best fucking friend that, and that was the last time he spoke to you, and you don’t want to go back on that. But you don’t know what he wants, only that tender and gentle isn’t it and that what you _want_ him to want is - you, of course. Someone who looks through you is better than someone who won’t look at you at all, and feeling his skin is better than nothing. You refuse to be alone again, ever, and you promise yourself that you will be whatever you have to be to keep Eridan Ampora(as pathetic as that motherfucking is) even if that thing is violent.

You slam him against walls, against floors, catch him off guard in the worst possibly ways and don’t keep your claws from leaving bloody scratches on his back, his chest, his thighs. Eridan takes it without complaint and without fighting back, and you find yourself having to pretend that he’s you - because never let it be said that you like yourself, not ever - and only don’t stop and give up because he still gets off on it and so do you. He still looks right fucking through you, though, except when you are making him bleed. Then, his eyes say _thank you, thank you_ and that’s better than calling him Tavros at least.

One night he has passed out on your floor and you are wiping off his back with a damp washcloth because it is a mess of scratches that have bled a little and it occurs to you what this must be for Eridan: he is punishing himself, and you are the tool he is using to do it. You have seen Eridan’s guilt. It corrodes him, keeps him from eating and sleeping, from talking to the John human who is ready to forgive _anyone_. And now it has driven him to you, and you are still a no-quadrant looser. You’d like to tell him that he shouldn’t feel so guilty and that you’ll make it better and that you can be the hero for him. You can’t say any of it out loud because he isn’t your matesprit and won’t be and you won’t be foolishly open with him.

You tell yourself instead that you’re 0kay with your relationship no matter what it is, though, because at least you have one.


	5. Break

When Karkat finally speaks to you again, he can’t bare to do it face-to-face but the beep that chimes from your husktop when he addresses you is good enough for you anyway. There was a human saying about that: beggars can’t be choosers.

 **  
\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has unblocked terminallyCapricarious [TC] --  
\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling terminallyCapricarious [TC] --  
CG: HEY SHITSTAIN.  
CG: I KNOW YOU’RE FUCKING THERE.  
TC: HeY mOtHeRfUcKeR wHaT’s AlL uP wItH yOu  
CG: SHUT THE FUCK UP THIS ISN’T A GRUBMUNCHING SOCIAL CALL.  
CG: ME AND THE FUCKASS KNOW SOMETHING’S UP WITH YOU AND THAT GROINMOLLUSK AMPORA AND WE’RE GOING TO FUCKING FIND OUT WHAT IT IS, GOT IT?  
CG: I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOG IF YOU ARE DOING ANY SORT OF FUCKED UP JUGGALO SHIT WITH HIM I WILL LET SERKET AND HER FUCKED UP PET RAINBOWDRINKER FINALLY MURDER YOU LIKE THEY HAVE BEEN BEGGING TO DO FOR AGES.  
CG: BAD ENOUGH THAT WE TOOK HIM WITH US IN THE FIRST PLACE, WE DON’T FUCKING NEED HIM GOING INSANE AGAIN, AS SATISFYING AS SEEING HIM FUCK VRISKA UP WITH FACE PAINT AND A SET OF GIANT FUCKING CLOWN SHOES WOULD BE.  
TC: honk :o(  
CG: UGH  
\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has blocked terminallyCapricarious [TC] --  
**

And you should be grateful that he’s motherfucking spoken to you at all, or maybe offended that he thinks so little of you, but in fact you’d have preferred that he stay silent on the matter because he’s right - you are doing motherfucking terrible things to Eridan and he’s right to suspect you. His mistrust is not misplaced, and you know that he’s seen the bruises you leave on the troll you wish you could call your lover.

But Eridan wants it. No matter how sorry, sorry, sorry you are when you see his skin marred and broken, you don’t stop. You can’t. You promised yourself that you would be whatever Eridan wanted of you. Keeping him, you decided, was _most_ important and being gentle doesn’t make him come to you so often. Going back on that means that he might leave you, and how could you stand that? Then it would be just you and your one-wheeled device that you still can’t ride and still can’t part with.

When Eridan comes to you that morning, looking for a fuck and you guess a place to spend the day, you turn him away. “Got shit to motherfuckin’ be all lookin’ after,” you lie after you inevitably press him to the wall and kiss him roughly, even though you won’t be going any farther with him tonight because you need a break even though you don’t, don’t want him to leave you. “I’ll be all seeing you tonight.”

You rub one of his horns affectionately until he shivers and nods and sulks away. You sleep that night and dream of Tavros.


	6. Dreaming (Part One)

The last thing you said to Tavros Nitram properly slimed was via trollian. It was a short conversation and it made a black hole of worry in the pit of your digestion sac.

**TC: MoThErFuCkIn WaTcH oUt, TaV  
TC: aInT gOt No MoRe MoThErFuCkIn PiE uP iN hErE.   
AT: wHAT UH, ARE YOU GOING, TO DO?  
AT: wHAT SHOULD i, UH, DO, gAMZEE,   
TC: sHiT i DoNt EvEn Be KnOwInG bRoThEr :o(  
TC: HONKhonkHONKhonk Be ThInKiN mAyBe YoU sHoUlD mOtHeRfUcKiN hIdE mY mOsT eXcElLeNt MoThErFuCkEr **

He wanted you to make it better. You didn’t. You couldn’t. And you were scared, and if _you_ were scared, then Tavros - you have to swallow a lump in your windtube when you think about how motherfucking terrified Tavros must have been, and how you couldn’t help at all, never did reassure him and - and in fact made it worse. More horrible than it could have ever been before.

All day you sink farther into withdrawal than you’ve been in sweeps. It pulls you tighter and tighter and while the others are huddled on their recuperation platform, surely in unsatisfied sleep, you ache all over and have the urge to honk HONK honk HONK and you just motherfucking hurt deep enough to scar. You’re shaking and your head is aching and eventually, only an hour before it should become dark again, you tear yourself from your huddle of blankets and stumble to the respite block Tavros claimed.

You swing his door open and he sits up. He rubs sleep from his eyes and clings to the layers of fabric that help keep him warm. You stand in the doorway until he stutters your name in that small voice of his that he uses when he’s not sure he’s allowed to speak. In your state it makes you motherfucking tingle and you slide into the room without a second thought. “Gamzee, please,” he says, voice hushed by fear as you press yourself over him, “Don’t do this.” But you can’t not do it, no matter how much Tavros trembles beneath you because you are standing on the edge of a deep, black hole, leaning over the edge and toeing the rim like a suicide jumper and you motherfucking need one more dose of Tavros Nitram before you swan dive off into some sick carnival or some shit where he can’t follow. You’ve got to feel him, like in your bones be all up and feeling him, before he’s too brave and too dead for you to ever really hold again.

Tavros Nitram is the most attractive troll you know. Even when his metal legs have totally shredded every pair of pants he owns he’s the most magic fucking miracle you know, especially when he’s all pressed beneath you and flushed with beautiful brown blood and making noises that make you want to stroke his horns _forever_. He’s eager in bed like he has to earn your affection, but fuck that noise because you motherfucking _loved_ Tavros Nitram and -

And why did you just think of him in the past tense?

Everything is too familiar. Under your hands Tavros whimpers. He says, “P-please...” weakly, and you almost think it with him, loosening your too-tight grip before he even finishes with his plea. There’s déjà vu all up in this shit and suddenly you don’t really feel like you’re testing the edge of that precipice anymore.

His eyes are closed and you kiss first one, then the other. Tavros is still trembling and you try to sooth him. “I don’t want to be motherfuckin’ hurtin’ you, Tavros, don’t want to ever be being wantin’ to motherfuckin’ be hurtin’ you,” you coo. His eyes finally open but you’re pressed too close to him to see them clearly. He kisses you suddenly and that startles you enough that you lever yourself up and away until you can look at him.

Tavros says, “This isn’t how this went last time,” just as you think it. Then you remember that really, the last time you touched Tavros’s sweet motherfucking body he was cold and Vriska laughed and you were going to eat that fucking bitch’s _face_ off but then she started to cry. Everything has been ruined forever. Tavros is dead, and you’re dreaming, and the memory that this dream is built off of is not sweet or comforting. It’s empty, because all the shit you should have said got caught in your throat.

In fact, while you had his sweet skin under you working miracles you never said anything you really motherfucking meant to Tavros Nitram. You called him your best friend but you were so flushed for him you couldn’t see anyone else. You had your mouth all over him but you never did say that his skin was so sugary sweet, you did your best to please him above yourself even when you were so high you couldn’t see straight and you still called it fucking, up until that last time you got your mouth on him and then all you said was, “Don’t you never be all tellin’ anyone I fucked you or any of that noise, brother,” and couldn’t even bring yourself to add that _fucking_ was too vulgar - to normal - for the magic you and he worked.

You didn’t even save him from Vriska, let him get run through with his own motherfucking lance. Tavros Nitram is dead, but when you look at him - he smiles at you.


	7. Dreaming (Part Two)

There has never in the history of anything been a more breath-taking smile than the smile Tavros gives you in that dream bubble. Suddenly you are not cold or dangerous, not even grieved or sad. You can’t remember Karkat, and his pointed silence, or the way Kanaya grasps her lipstick when she looks at you, or even the dead way Eridan motherfucking Ampora looks at you because _Tavros Nitram_ is smiling at you again.

He’s still dead and you’re still ugly, but he looks so fucking happy to see you and suddenly even the ages you know you can have in a dream could never be enough. “Tavros,” you mutter hoarsely. His nervous grin is so familiar - so reassuring - you think you could drown in it. He’s still surprised you’ll give him the time of night, and no wonder considering the last thing you said to him but you’re going to motherfucking fix that.

The next moments are a blur of hands and tongues. You can’t decide between kissing him to swallow his smile, or laying your mouth all over him and finally tasting his skin again. You find a happy medium between the two eventually. When you remember yourself enough to wrap a gentle hand around Tavros’ bulge, you also remember that there are thirty thousand million things that you _have_ to tell Tavros Nitram. He gasps and squirms beneath you when your thumb rubs his slit gently. He is so beautiful that everything just tumbles out all at once in an incomprehendible jumble of syllables.

Tavros giggles and you kiss him again. “I uhh, missed you,” he says softly when you pull away. He stretches to kiss you and you realize that your makeup - you don’t have your makeup on. In a dreambubble, just Tavros being near you is enough to strip you of your most ingrained defenses and _Tavros missed you_.

“Motherfuckin’ missed you, too,” you say, hushed, and trace your fingers over his groin, up his abdomen. You really adore his abdomen, just really motherfucking love the shit out of it. You’re leaning down to give it a good, proper lick when Tavros says, “R-really?” He’s so fucking surprised you’re ashamed, and when you look up at him his eyes are wide and shiny like you proclaimed your everlasting flushed feelings. When you actually get around to saying everything you need to tell him he’s probably going to have some kind of seizure from the shock. It will be doubly your fault for being so fucking useless at just saying what you mean.

“Of course I motherfucking missed you,” you growl at him. Tavros shrinks away, which wasn’t what you wanted at all, it’s just that - the way missing someone really works isn’t about how long you’ve known them. The way missing someone works is, they’re _gone_ one day and the sum of how much one misses them is directly perportional to how often one is doing something and suddenly realize that _they’re never going to do it with you again_.

You can’t make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anymore and your eyes never focus on the corner where your one-wheeled device leans against the wall, and for a long time fucking Eridan was only okay because you were seeing Tavros under you instead. At least you _knew_ that loosing Tavros was going to tear your soul out though - and it’s the worst motherfucking thing you can conceive of that Tavros _didn’t_ know. But you sooth his anxiety away: kiss the left corner of his mouth because he has a dimple there and smooth your hands over his hips, his sides, his arms, his beautiful neck, all over his sweet motherfucking perfect skin until you’re holding his face so he will stop avoiding your eyes. “I’ve just got so much shit to tell you,” you whisper, “Can’t be keeping it all straight up in my head. Always was so motherfucking flushed with you it made my head spin.”

That startles Tavros, too, and it’s your own fucking fault. But now that you’ve started talking you can’t stop. “Missed you like a part of my body, and never motherfucking treated you right when I had you and should have fucking said something about all this shit that last time but you were so motherfucking scared that I left,” you say, voice hushed from the effort of speaking all of this clearly when it wants to tumble off your lips like a train wreck. You’re never going to be able to say everything, but you have to try, smoothing one thumb over Tavros’ flushed cheeks, “And you were always fucking looking at me like I was going to all up and leave on you, like you were just some regular motherfucker, and I never could tell you how much I fucking pity you, more than anyone else in the whole fucking universe. Never would have fucking left you, and I almost killed myself to follow you. And you, you’re not even comfortable _saying my name._ ”

Tavros gasps, gaps at you because you’ve stunned him - stunned him just exactly how you knew your words would - but you get rid of that look as quickly as you can with a kiss, all slow and gentle and technically not what troll kisses are even motherfucking supposed to be about but, you had seen some of those human movies and the motherfuckers sort of knew what they were doing when it came to telling people shit with your mouth. Your tongue has never been so gentle in his mouth, and he doesn’t complain. You are soft and careful and when you enter him and he moans and looks at you like you’ve given him the world, you think that you’d give motherfucking anything for Eridan to look at you like that.

You wake up with the taste of Tavros on your lips, but you wish Eridan was next to you.


	8. Truth

The sun on this new planet of yours is pleasant, not deadly, and you take the time to enjoy it when you can. You are outside at what the humans call “high noon”, just looking at those hills, imagining packing a bag and just walking forever, when Dave finds you. He’s carrying a picnic basket, headed in exactly the direction you want to go(up and away and into the cool shade of the trees in the far distant forest), but he stops to speak to you, though he does not turn to look at you, just as you do your best not to look at him. In fact, he does his best to not even speak to you and later you think that he must not have even wanted to bother getting involved. But he does.

Dave turns his head towards you only slightly and almost blinds you with the sun bouncing off of his sunglasses. “They convinced Eridan to keep you busy,” Dave says, “Rose thinks it’s rape.” And that’s all. There is barely any inflection to his voice, he might as well have been reading from a dictionary. He continues walking and you follow him with your eyes until he disappears completely.

You wonder who ‘they’ are, and you wonder what they said to Eridan to convince him. You feel like you are drowning but you slouch inside anyway to find out more, flicking your computer on with one finger and sit heavily in front of it on the floor of your respiteblock. This must have something to do with you and Karkat’s strange conversation, but you can’t bring yourself to open a chat with him. You choose the lesser of two evils.

**\-- terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling gardenGnostic [GG] --  
TC: HeY cHiCa  
TC: I aM aLl uP iN hAvInG sOmE qUeStIoNs FoR yOu If yOu’Re AlL dOwN wItH mE aSkInG tHeM  
GG: hello gamzee i thought that you would talk to me today!!  
GG: i am ok with you asking your questions go ahead**

So you do ask your questions, and when you are done talking to Jade, you stare at the computer screen for half an age before standing up and walking to the opposite side of the room. You take out a duffelbag, and in it first place your shirts, then your pants. Two extra belts, underwear, six books, your husktop, string and needle, and then you take Nepeta’s hat from it’s place on the wall and finally, finally clean it of the blood that decorates it.

But you will not be taking the hat with you. Not even when it is clean and dried. You hang it over your one-wheeled device and turn your back to it.


	9. Stones

When Eridan comes to you, you are wondering if you should take the rocks from the beach which sit scared throughout your room. They are rough and most of them ugly, the only piece of Alternia you know to exist. Most of them, you collected yourself: waiting for your lusus on the rocky beach at the back of your hive, alternatively stacking rocks in piles and throwing them into the sea: _Come back_ , a rock onto the pile at your left. _Stay away_ , a stone viciously chucked into the ocean. The rocks are brown and tan and rusty, ugly low blooded colors that you brought back to your hive anyway, some even still wet and dripping. Maybe if you could bring enough of the sea to your hive, you thought, your lusus would never have to leave it.

“Gam?” is what Eridan says to you, “What’re you fuckin’ doin’?” You look up from the rocks in your hands, and then away. You do not want to speak to him even if you must.

“I’m motherfucking leaving, motherfucker,” you say. Eridan had begun to call you by your first name at some point, and has now switched to the sort of fond nickname you didn’t suppose he’d ever use again. It only strikes you as odd _now_ , though, and doesn’t warm you at all. He does not say your name like Tavros would, and in fact with your eyes open you can see nothing of Tavros in him, except that you pity him as much as you pitied Tavros. Maybe more.

Today, Eridan looks paler than he ever has before. He leans on your door and you drop all but one of your considered rocks to the ground. Eridan’s question comes even quieter in the wake of this racket: “Where are you going?”

“Away,” you say to the rock in your hand. It is the only rock you wish to keep, the one which perfectly matches the color of Tavros’ blood, and then you think of his blood splattered all over the ectobiology lab and Vriska so proud and so ashamed at the same time, _You can’t speak to Tavros. Don’t you remem8er?_ but you did more than speak with him last night.

You turn from Eridan and throw the orange-brown rock as hard as you can. It embeds itself in the wall for a brief moment and then falls to the floor at the feet of your one-wheeled device with a _plunk_. You are not sorry for the dent in the wall.

The zip to the bag sticks when you turn back to it without looking at Eridan, but despite your frustration, you only tug it closed gently. It sounds more like a door opening than a bag closing, and you are so glad to have finally found your way out.

Eridan creeps up to you. He lays a hand on your shoulder but you shrug it off as you shoulder your bag. “ _Gamzee_ ,” he implores. You hate that he has dropped the nick name, hate that he used it in the first place, hate that you have been put in this position at all.

“Did you know that humans have this motherfucking word - coercion?” you ask, “Can’t rightly explain it to a motherfucker, but what it means - it means that this is rape, even though you never fucking said no to me.” After that the room is so silent that you can hear Karkat ranting about something six or seven rooms away and Eridan is almost definitely not breathing.

“Motherfucking Terezi Pyrope,” you continue bitterly, “Doesn’t know nothing about fucking justice, if she’s still thinking that this is all motherfucking the right thing to do. Ain’t nothing she can fucking say to defend it, and I won’t be controlled like a fucking animal and I won’t let them all be dragging you into it, motherfucker. Ain’t letting them motherfucking drag you down.”

You are out the door before Eridan can reply - you do not even know if he would have argued or agreed, but either way you don’t want to hear it. The hills call to you, promising something better, if equally lonely, and you intend to take it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was also posted on the homestuck kink meme (homesmut) and filled two prompts (which are c/p'd below). I'll be writing two shorter works, one from Tavros' POV (working title "Nearby") and one from Eridan's (working title "Closer Than Far").
> 
>  
> 
> "Post-game. Sopor slime makes him less genocidal, but Gamzee can't just go back to being the happy, stoned kid he used to be; maybe he's still crazy, or maybe killing several of his friends just changed him too much.  
> Consensual, please. Bonus points if it's someone who knew him well before the Veil massacre (so Karkat, Terezi, Equius or Tavros) or Eridan."
> 
> "I subscribe to the headcanon of 'Tavros always knew what Gamzee was like sober'. Feel like playing with this a bit?  
> So the trolls are in the Veil and the supply of sopor slime won't last forever. Despite everything else that's going on, in the back of his head Tavros is always anxious about what will happen when they finally run out and Gamzee has to sober up.  
> At night (or morning considering their sleep cycle but /semantics), Gamzee comes into Tavros' room. Cue Tavros' internal fit of OH GOD OH GOD THIS IS IT HE'S HERE TO KILL ME DHFDSKJFD but it turns out Gamzee either stumbled into his room by mistake or just came to chill out with his bro (or, you know, sexings, whatever you want to write).  
> Make it funny, make it dark, whatever you like. c:"


End file.
